The Price of Wisdom
by rynling
Summary: Zelda walks through a palimpsest of memories as she searches for the source of the Calamity within Hyrule Castle, where she learns that Ganon is not what she thought it was. This story contains speculative backstory concerning who Ganondorf may have been in the Breath of the Wild timeline. Mostly platonic Zelda/Ganondorf, with romantic Zelda/Link strongly implied.
1. To Be Haunted

The silence bled through the cracks of the castle and coagulated into thick pools of stillness.

Zelda thought it would be different, somehow. The roar of flames and the screams of refugees had been deafening as she made her way through Hyrule Castle Town with slow and deliberate steps. The air had been filled with ash and the ozone flash of the beams of the Guardians, which skittered through the burning buildings like spiders grown fat and frantic. These machines moved as Zelda had never seen them move before, and despite her growing apprehension she was able to appreciate the efficiency of their trajectories. She had expected chaos to reign at the castle as well, but the reality of the situation was infinitely more disturbing.

When she stepped through the gates at the entrance to the castle complex, it was as if she had passed through an invisible curtain. On the outside, the city screamed in pain as it was consumed by flames. On the inside, the castle lay within a single moment of dreadful anticipation. A strange acrid smell tickled her nose, but there was no smoke.

A vague sense of vertigo tugged at the edges of Zelda's attention, and it took her a few seconds to place its source. The geometry of the architecture was appallingly amiss. Lines that should have ended in neat angles were twisted, and corners compressed themselves into nothing or expanded into impossibly vast pockets of space. It was like looking through a heat haze, but the air was cool, almost chilly. Something was terribly wrong here.

As Zelda walked into the lower courtyard, the quiet only deepened. She felt rather than heard a small earthquake under her feet. The stones of the outer walls trembled, but they did not make a sound.

The courtyard was deserted, and all the windows in the high walls that rose above it were empty. The castle had housed hundreds of soldiers and staff, as well as numerous visitors from all the four corners of Hyrule. At any given time, there would have been members of the parliament and official witnesses operating in the service of the royal council bustling about, not to mention the various Sheikah scientists and engineers who had made the castle their base of operations. Zelda hoped these people had been able to evacuate, but she feared for their fates. No one hailed her as she strode across the paving stones, and no one rushed to seek her aid.

She was alone here, completely alone – but this was as it should be. The Calamity was her responsibility, and hers alone.

Zelda had expected there to be monsters. She had been attacked before, and Link had defended her, cutting down wave after wave of the strange creatures that suddenly appeared on the margins of her kingdom, creeping over the borders under the cover of night. Or had they always been in Hyrule? Where had they come from, and what manner of grudge did they hold against her people?

She knew she should not trouble herself with these concerns, yet they bothered her. She could not stop herself from asking questions, even if the answers were inconvenient. Perhaps she could find answers here – if only she could find anything. There was no demon king gloating down at her from the ramparts, and no beasts rushed out to capture her. There was nothing in Hyrule Castle, only silence and ruin.

Zelda's heart hammered in her chest, but she would have been offended if anyone suggested that she was afraid. _This is my purpose in life_ , she told herself, but she could not calm her breathing as she pressed her hand against one of the great oak doors at the entrance to the castle buildings that towered over her. The door creaked ever so softly when she pushed it, but its hinges and timbers did not resist her touch. Zelda swallowed, gritted her teeth, and slipped through the narrow crack that opened between the doors.

When she saw what waited for her on the other side, she had to bite back a scream. There was darkness, and that darkness was filled with eyes. They were amber with vertically slit pupils, and they glowed with their own eldritch light. They were huge, easily as large as her head, and all of them were intently focused on her.

Red flecks of light like falling sparks drifted through the air. As Zelda's vision adjusted to the dim illumination, she saw that the dozen or so eyes were supported by spindly stalks emerging from a thick bituminous mass that coated the floor and walls. The fleshy goo pulsed with an uncanny approximation of a heartbeat.

 _Sweet Hylia_ , Zelda thought as she recoiled in horror. _Is that substance alive?_

With all their knowledge of ancient technology, the Sheikah scientists had never said anything about a monster like the gelatinous creosote that prevented her from entering deeper into the room. Had this mess – or this _creature_ – been deliberately placed here to bar her progress? Was it the byproduct of a machine, like the spent oil that required special treatment in order not to become a hazard? Or was it some sort of construct, an experiment gone awry?

Zelda's curiosity got the better of her. No matter how much her father tried to dissuade her, she had always been the victim of her desire to know more, to fully investigate the world around her. She clenched her fists and approached the goo that blocked the inner gate of the reception chamber. All of the eyes followed her progress, their pupils dilating as they tracked her movement. The red flecks of light flitted away from her, not a single one falling on her skin.

As she approached the black mass, it twitched hideously and retracted into itself, creating a passage just wide enough for her to walk through. The sight was so awful that Zelda's skin broke out in goosebumps, but she pressed forward nonetheless. The small tunnel smelled strongly of ammonia. It was a clinical smell, like the medicinal alcohol used to sanitize a wound.

While the fields burned, Zelda had taken the Master Sword to the Great Deku Tree, who watched her as she returned it to its pedestal to await Link's return. The tree, curse its wooden heart, had given her advice that seemed wise but was, for all practical purposes, useless. She was not some lovestruck teenager, but a princess burdened with a great and terrible task. Why had it not prepared her for this goddess-damned scene of living tar coating the walls of an otherwise empty castle? Why had it not told her _anything_? Her Champions had given her encouragement, but it was her knowledge that needed to be bolstered, not her will. It was almost as if her role had been merely symbolic from the very beginning. A sacrifice does not need to know what greater purpose it serves, after all.

On the other side of the tunnel was even more of the black substance, which clung to the ceiling of the reception hall and oozed down the walls in gluey rivulets. Zelda wondered how there could possibly be so much of the stuff. Where was it coming from? If she could locate its source, perhaps she would be able to find Ganon. According to the legends, the demon appeared in a different form to anyone unlucky enough to see it. How would it look to her, a princess whose sole fear was that she would betray the expectations placed on her head along with her crown? The only way to know was to seek it out.

Zelda thought of her father, of the Champions who had fought for her, and of Link, who was supposed to have been her hero, but she pushed these memories from her mind as she gathered her courage and prepared to plunge herself even deeper into the horror of Hyrule Castle.


	2. An Alchemy of Kindness

If Zelda were going to start looking for Ganon, the logical place to begin was the Sheikah laboratory. It had been set up in the old stables next to the training yard under the eastern guard tower, and it was where the machines used to control the Guardians were stored. It was also relatively easy to access from the castle entrance, which meant she would be able to leave the oozing darkness of the interior.

Zelda slowly made her way up the path to the yard, the loose gravel covering the paving stones crunching beneath the soles of her sandals. Bits and pieces of the castle had gradually been built onto the side of a hill from which a plentiful spring of clear water flowed, and over the centuries the complex had become quite large, much larger than anyone had any use for in her own time. Most of the politicians and courtiers preferred to live in the town that sprawled out beyond the castle walls, as did the soldiers.

Even in its inefficiency, the symbolism of the structure had never been lost on Zelda. The royal family benevolently presides over the people of Hyrule, the waters of life flowing from the seat of its power. Someone with a more pragmatic view might say that this symbolism was secondary to the castle's ability to withstand a siege, but who would attack it? The Hylian monarchy had been at peace with the tribes that occupied Hyrule for centuries, and travelers from beyond the formidable natural borders of its territory were few and far between.

Zelda had always wondered about the purpose of the royal guard, who seemed nothing more than a drain on the financial resources of her kingdom. She considered their existence to be a form of social welfare, a means of employing young people whose foolhardy ambitions and aggressive impulses would otherwise be directed into destructive channels. When monsters began creeping into the kingdom under the cover of night, however, the castle and its soldiers began to make sense. In the end, however, neither the strong walls of the castle nor the polished blades of its soldiers had been of any use. How could mere humans fight the Guardians, which had been designed to combat a legendary demon? How could a castle be defended against the insidious black mucous that seemed to bleed from its very stones?

Zelda's mind snapped back into focus as she approached the large wooden door of the Sheikah lab, which was standing wide open. The darkness on the other side of the threshold was illuminated by the blinking lights of the equipment, which were now magenta instead of cyan. Zelda regretted that she had not had time to learn more about the ancient technology. She knew the basics, such as how to operate the Sheikah Slate and how to direct the movements of the Guardians, but she did not understand the fundamental principles guiding them. What was inside the ceramic casing of these machines? What powered them? And why had the color of their tubing changed?

As Zelda stepped warily inside the converted barn, she remembered the first time she had come here. A young Sheikah woman named Purah had met her at the entrance and steered her through the hulking Guardians and the backlit screens surrounding them. Purah obviously had no experience dealing with royalty, but despite being a bit awkward she was eager to make a good impression. She spoke quickly, and Zelda understood some of the terms she used, such as "radial symmetry," while the meaning of others, such as "user interface," were lost on her.

When it seemed that Purah would keep talking indefinitely, Zelda complimented her on the pair of glasses she kept nervously adjusting. Purah had been so surprised that she fell silent, and the brief moment of quiet was so unexpected that both of them started laughing. After that, they became quick friends, swapping books and papers and sharing stories and information. Unfortunately, Zelda's time in the lab was limited by her daily prayer rituals, a practice that only grew more onerous as the stars aligned into the positions forewarned by the oracles.

 _How strange that Hyrule still relies on stargazers when we could have use this technology to aid us_ , Zelda thought, the glow of the machines lighting her way through the darkness. All of the Guardians once sheltered here had charged out of the cavernous space, and the earth floor was still littered with the remains of the violence of their passing. There were screws strewn about underfoot, and gears and wires and ceramic plating. Zelda was ashamed to admit that she didn't know what most of this equipment did, or even how it fit together. It had been enough of a challenge to figure out the Sheikah Slate, which only gradually revealed its secrets through hours of patient trial and error.

Zelda stopped in front of a large screen, which was made of the same glass-like material as that of the slate. The tubing that surrounded it pulsed with an angry magenta, and a thick crack split the center of its surface. Zelda paused and listened but could hear nothing – no metallic clanking, no hiss of steam, no voices, not even the skittering of rats in the walls.

It seemed there was nothing here. Zelda sighed and reached out to touch the screen, but the moment her fingertips alighted on the jagged edge of its fissure she was immediately struck by an overwhelming sense of vertigo.

She closed her eyes, and she felt the ground shift underneath her feet. Her breath caught in her throat, and she opened her eyes to find herself in a place that was the same yet completely different.

The first thing she saw was herself – or, at least, a girl a year or two younger than herself whose features exhibited an uncanny resemblance to her own. The girl's face bore an expression of deep concentration that Zelda recognized from gazing at her own reflection in the mirror that hung next to her desk in the castle tower. The girl was surrounded by three softly glowing screens whose casings were not caked with the grime of long disuse, but new and clean and beautiful. A smaller screen resembling a Sheikah Slate lay under the girl's hands, and she typed furiously while chains of random numbers and characters scrolled from screen to screen in front of her frowning face.

Zelda waited for the girl to acknowledge her, but she didn't seem to have noticed that someone was standing right at her side. Zelda cleared her throat, but this invoked no response. Perplexed, she opened her mouth and prepared to speak, still wondering what she was going to say even as she inhaled, but then a voice interrupted the tapping of the girl's fingers on the glass.

"Excuse me, miss? I'm looking for Kaepora."

The language was unfamiliar to her, but Zelda was somehow able to understand the words. She looked up in amazement and saw a young man who, judging from the color of his hair and eyes, appeared to be a Gerudo. She had never seen a Gerudo male before, but he could be nothing else, not with his thick sideburns and broad shoulders. Although still quite tall, he was much shorter than Urbosa and the other Gerudo women she knew, and he wore a collared Hylian tunic. He was around the same age as the girl, but the lines of his face were striking. Perhaps one day, when he was older, he might become handsome.

The girl looked up at him and furrowed her eyebrows, apparently not understanding why he had interrupted her. Her frown deepened, communicating her annoyance, but the boy pressed on.

"I'm new here. I was just hired as a junior programmer, and Kaepora is the supervisor I was told to report to. Can you tell me where I could find him?"

The girl's face softened, and then she smiled. "I have no idea," she said, turning away from her screens. "To be honest, I've never gone looking for him, but he always seems to find me, especially when I least want to see him. I'm sure he'll show up if you stick around long enough. You're welcome to sit here with me. Go ahead, pull up a chair. I'm sure there's one around here somewhere."

Along with the young man, Zelda glanced around the room. It had none of the clutter of the laboratory she was familiar with, and an incredible number of large screens were arranged neatly into workstations. Tubes of clear light ran along the high ceiling, casting an illumination so bright that it banished all shadows. Gone were the rough wooden slats of the barn, and the room's walls were smooth and almost blindingly white.

Instead of doing what he was asked, the young man approached the seated girl. Neither of them acknowledged her presence. Zelda, who had already witnessed more strange things in the past day than most people see in a lifetime, simply accepted that she was experiencing some sort of vision. She could think about what this meant later, but for now she would keep her eyes and ears open and try to learn what she could.

"What are you doing?" the Gerudo boy asked, looking at the girl's screens instead of her face.

"I'm trying to locate an error in this stupid code. I've been sitting here and scanning it for the past fifteen minutes, but I just can't find it."

"Sometimes they hide. Can I take a look?"

" _Excuse me_. You just walked in here, a fresh hire who hasn't even checked in with the boss yet, and now you think you're going to find something I missed? How rude."

"I'm actually pretty good at this. It won't hurt to let me try."

The girl shot him a dirty look, but he was already reaching for her Sheikah Slate, the fabric of his sleeve brushing against her arm. He obviously cared more about solving whatever sort of problem the girl was working on than he did about being polite.

"There's a memory leak somewhere, and it's draining the system resources," the girl muttered, scanning the text on the screens as the Gerudo boy scrolled through it. He gave a noncommittal grunt in response. A beat later, however, his face was transformed by the excitement of discovery.

"You're going to get mad that it's so simple," he began, "but it's – "

"Right there," he and the girl said at the same time as they both pointed to the center screen. There was a moment of silence, but then their eyes met, and they burst out laughing together.

"I'm being a bit of a boor," the boy said, still smiling. "I never asked you for your name."

"I'm Zelda," the girl responded in a dry voice. "You may have heard of me."

The young man seemed taken aback, but he recovered quickly. "I have indeed heard the name before. It practically reeks of tradition."

Zelda was not in the least bit surprised to find that the girl was her ancestor, but it was strange that the Gerudo boy would speak in this manner to royalty. The princess herself, however, seemed to appreciate his lack of formality.

"If we're going to be working together," she said, grinning up at him, "I think it's only fair that I ask your name as well."

"My name is Ganondorf. It's just as traditional a name as yours, and I don't much care for it. Please, call me Ganon."

As soon as the word left his mouth, Zelda's heart stopped. Everything went dark in front of her eyes, and she felt herself yank her hand back from the cracked screen. She blinked, and everything was once again ancient and broken. The bright light had disappeared, and she was back in the dead castle, the easy laughter of her ancestor replaced by the ragged rasps of her breathing.


	3. A Shape Defined by Absence

As the vision faded, Zelda remained in the Sheikah lab, staring at the distorted outline of her face on the cracked glass of the screen. She felt no thirst or hunger, and the cuts and bruises on her feet and arms had ceased to cause her pain. Her mind was filled with a vague buzz of confusion, and she felt that she could simply slip into it as she might crawl into a warm bed on a cold night. The golden power that had surged through her when she defended Link and sealed the Calamity within the castle had deserted her, and both her body and spirit felt as fragile and empty as if she were nothing more than a discarded shell. What she had just seen made no sense to her, and it tired her already strained mind to think about it.

She stood in the darkness, cocooned by the softly pulsing illumination of the abandoned machinery and half-assembled Guardians. She could have stayed there indefinitely, allowing her mind to wander as the stream of time trickled by in the world outside, had not a blob of black goo dropped down onto the desk directly in front of her with a heavy splat. Zelda flinched but did not turn away as she watched as a thin stem rise from the gelatinous pile. Its tip swelled like a balloon, and then there was a quiet pop. With a burst of an ammonic stench, one of the large orange eyes was suddenly staring back at her.

Zelda clenched her teeth together to repress her urge to scream. What was the point? There was no one left to hear her. As if agreeing with her thoughts, the eye gave a lazy blink, its eyelids moving horizontally. Zelda inhaled sharply and left the building with quick steps, not wanting to think about what may have been looking down at her from the shadows of the ceiling.

When she emerged back outside, the first thing Zelda noticed were the clouds covering the sky. They swirled like dirty streams of lye in a washtub, their edges tinged faintly purple with electrical discharge. The air was heavy. It felt as if one of the violent storms that marked the transition from summer to autumn were on the verge of bursting down upon the castle, but there was no touch of humidity on her skin. It was as dry as a desert night, and Zelda instinctively understood that no rain would come to wash away the uncleanliness that had gathered in the cracks of the castle walls.

Without knowing where she should search next, Zelda walked in a daze, slowly ascending the slope of the road that led to the main part of the castle. The path curved around to the west, but even as it rose Zelda could see no movement above or below her. When she arrived at one of the guard towers built along the inner wall, she climbed the steps cut into the side of the rock in an attempt to gain an elevated perspective. She was disappointed when she reached the top, for she saw nothing but the dark clouds above her and the black plumes of smoke rising from the town. Whatever Ganon was, it did not seem particularly eager to reveal itself to her.

Instead of returning to the main passage through the castle, Zelda began to walk along the rampart of the wall. Even through the veil of falling ash she could see the red flash of Guardian beams in the distance. The power that passed through her had stopped some of them, but others still roamed the fields, training their robotic sights on anything that moved.

When the golden light washed over her and burst from her hand in a torrent, Zelda had felt, for perhaps the first time in her life, that she was exactly where she needed to be and doing exactly what needed to be done. She was filled with a sense of freedom, as if a multitude of wings had lifted her feet from the earth, and she understood what it must have been like for the Champions to pilot the Divine Beasts, a privilege she had been denied. She dearly wished that she could be anywhere but this castle. If only she could run across the fields wielding the Master Sword! While Link had been training, however, she had been forced to pray. The sword was only so much metal in her hands, and her arms trembled with its weight when she held it.

The firstborn daughters of her line were charged with recording the deeds of the royal family, a duty that Zelda had carried out to the best of her ability. Through the years she read the thoughts and memories of the princesses and queens who came before her, and she marveled at the poise and grace that shone through their words. As she grew older, Zelda noticed that these women wrote almost entirely of the ambitions of people other than themselves. This frustrated her, and she hated herself for not being able to accept what she could not change.

Her father had endlessly castigated her for this failing. As she ran her fingertips over the rough stones of the crenellations lining the wall, Zelda remembered a conversation she had once had with him in this very spot. It was his habit to walk the walls in the morning, thus allowing the people who moved along the lower pathways of the castle to see him progress toward the sanctum in his regalia. Zelda frequently approached him during this time, knowing that he would be hesitant to express strong emotion while in the public eye.

Zelda had remarked to her father that the young women of the Gerudo tribe, when they reached her age, often left their homes to travel abroad. She had rehearsed this speech for days in an attempt to strike the right tone of nonchalance, but when she spoke the words aloud her voice sounded petulant in her own ears. Neither she nor her father was a stranger to this argument, and the king responded to her as he always did. He reminded her that she was a princess, and that a princess's place was the castle.

She tried to reason with him, insisting that she was not fleeing her duties. She would be a wiser ruler if only she could see more of the world outside of the kingdom she was meant to rule. She reminded him that he had enjoyed sailing when he was younger, and that this granted him the broader perspective for which he was lauded. He replied by snapping at her that Hyrule was the only world she needed to see. More importantly, he added, her primary duty was not that she go out to see her people, but that she be seen by the people who came to her. Zelda was so exacerbated by the familiar ruts of this exchange that she lost her temper and accused her father of being bitter that he could no longer travel himself.

She must have struck a nerve, for he commenced a tirade so loud that the people below the wall fell silent and stared at them. She had been humiliated, struggling to restrain her tears as he stormed away from her.

In retrospect, Zelda thought, she had probably been correct; her father had more than likely been taking his own frustrations out on her. He had recently initiated preparations for the coming battle against the Calamity, and his movements were sharply curtailed as he faced political resistance against the expenditure of excavating ancient weapons and employing Sheikah technicians to operate them. Shortly thereafter he had designated the Champions who would later pilot the Divine Beasts that would eventually be dug up and reassembled, and Zelda suspected that it was they who had convinced him to allow her to travel through the kingdom in the company of the young knight chosen by the Master Sword.

That evening, however, she had been confined to the chapel on the king's orders and instructed to pray so that she might cleanse the impurities that had entered her heart. As the stars made their slow and relentless journey across the sky, Zelda refused to weep, and the bitterness of the tears she had not shed never left her.

As Zelda approached the next guard tower, she could see that the creosotic substance that infested the lower reaches of the castle had begun to climb upward from the darkness of the open doorway. She realized that she would have to make a choice. Would she turn back and return to the main road, or would she try to keep moving forward along the wall?

The anger sparked by her memory caused her to keep walking out of pure spite, and it was not long before a gravid slick of the tarry mess was right in front of her. Several of the glowing orange eyes emerged from stalks attached to the slime oozing from the tower, and they watched her come closer with their uncannily inquisitive gazes.

 _Even when not a soul remains in this castle, I'm still being watched_ , Zelda thought resentfully.

 _Fine, then watch this_. She scowled, stretched her arm back, and struck the patch of black goo in front of her with as much strength as she could muster.

As soon as the palm of her hand connected with the rubbery substance, she was overcome with another intense feeling of vertigo. Her head spun, and she closed her eyes.

When her stomach settled, Zelda blinked her eyes open and saw that she was no longer in the castle. Or, rather, she was not in _her_ castle. She seemed to be in a palace of some sort, its pale sandstone walls covered with gorgeous tapestries. Her vision cleared, and she could make out the dragonfly eyes of the Gerudo crest emblazoned on a ream of silk hanging above a throne she quickly recognized as being almost identical to Urbosa's. It was occupied by one of the most formidable women she had ever seen, and in front of her was the Gerudo boy. He was wearing a voluminous set of robes, and his red hair twined down his back in a ponytail, but Zelda had no doubt he was the same person she had been in her earlier vision. To her horror, his face was twisted with rage.

"I WILL NOT BE A PRINCE," he shouted at the seated queen, but her stern expression did not yield in response to his outburst.

"It is not your choice to make," she said without the slightest bit of emotion in her voice. "Your birth was sacred, as is your duty. Your responsibility is to our people. You dishonor us all by your insistence on pursuing your foolish hobbies."

The boy did not speak back to her, but Zelda could see that it was only because he was struggling to control himself. His fists were clenched so tightly that the skin of his knuckles was almost white.

The queen's frown deepened. "You know the legends, Ganondorf. You know the stories of the voe whose name you inherited, and you know why you must dedicate your prayers to the peace and prosperity of the Gerudo. There is only one role a voe can serve, and you cannot for a second believe that an exception will be made for you. This is your destiny."

The boy's face relaxed, but the smile that replaced his snarl was without warmth.

"That voe, all those many years ago," he said in a voice so soft that it was almost a whisper, "I wonder why he rebelled against the Gerudo traditions? It's strange, isn't it, that the legends never say anything about that. How convenient it must be to brand everyone who doesn't agree with you as evil."

The serenity of the queen's face shattered. "You insolent child, the depth of your ignorance is truly bottomless. Be gone from my presence!" she ordered, rising to her feet to glare down at him.

"With pleasure," the boy replied in a dry tone, turning on his heels and pacing down the line of the carpet that led away from the throne.

Knowing that she would not be seen, Zelda hurried to follow along behind him, not daring to look back at the furious queen.

As soon as she passed through the curtains covering the doorway, a marvelous site met Zelda's eyes. The lower balconies and terraces of the Gerudo palace remained almost unchanged from how she remembered them, but beyond the walls was a forest of towers stretching into the heavens, each one dotted with lights so brilliant that the night was as bright as the dawn. Zelda had seen monumental towers before, but they contained only dust and cobwebs. And yet this city – for surely it was a city, exponentially larger than even Hyrule Castle Town – practically vibrated with life. She felt that she would never see the end of it, no matter how long she looked, and so she simply stared, transfixed with wonder.

"Take me to the East Oasis Station nexus portal," the boy said in a crisp voice, breaking her trance.

Zelda looked at him and was surprised to see that he had produced a Sheikah Slate from between the layers of his loose robes. It flashed in response to his command, and a dense mixture of text and pictures jumped onto its screen.

"Yes, thank you," he went on, still addressing the screen as he began walking down a set of sandstone stairs. "Reserve me a seat on the evening express to Hyrule Castle City. Take the credits out of my personal account. Good, yes, confirmed. Next, go to admin settings, yes, and disable all DMs for the next two hours. Confirmed, excellent. Now set up..."

The Gerudo boy continued speaking as he disappeared from her view, but Zelda did not follow him. She was still enraptured by the marvel of the city that exploded into the night sky like fireworks. It was beyond anything she had ever imagined, even in her wildest fantasies. Her heart was filled with a longing so fierce that it hurt. What was this world? Had it truly existed? How had it come into being? And what could possibly have happened to it?


	4. The Conscious Horror of Destruction

As the bright lights of Zelda's vision faded, she realized that she was no longer touching the gluey black substance that gathered in a thick puddle between the crenellations lining the top of the castle wall. It had drawn away from her hand in an uneven circle, leaving her touching nothing more than the rough stone.

The palm and edges of her hand were bright red, and her skin tingled. Although she hadn't been aware of any pain while she was lost in her vision, the goo apparently had a caustic effect on her flesh. Had it moved to prevent her from being harmed? Zelda stared at the orange eyes emerging from the guard tower. They were still watching her.

"What are you?" she asked, but of course there was no answer.

Whatever it was, the black slime did not seem to bear her any ill will. If it could move and shift of its own volition, she reasoned, then perhaps she might be able to forge a path through it. She was still disturbed by the creosotic viscosity of the faintly pulsing mass, but it was certainly worth a try.

Zelda entered the guard tower, gritting her teeth as she passed through the ring of gelatinous goop surrounding the open doorway. As soon as she saw what was on the other side, she immediately understood that she would not be able to climb down from here, as the black goo was completely blocking the stairs. An oily film on its surface shimmered as it oozed along the corners of the walls. The stairwell was like one of the tar pits she had seen on her travels through Faron, seemingly shallow and placid but inescapable once an unlucky creature set foot into it.

Although it seemed obvious in retrospect, Zelda realized that the substance was probably coming from below. Which was odd, she mused, staring at the quagmire that used to be a guard tower, because Hyrule Castle did not have a "below." There were no dungeons or underground stores of provisions or treasure hoards or anything of the sort, and the constant downhill flow of water meant that there was no need for an elaborate sewer system. The only area of the castle that stood out in her mind as a possible source of the slime were the docks hidden in a cave on the north side of the hill supporting the castle. To get there, she would need to use the secret passage in the library, which could be accessed through the Great Hall. As luck would have it, the main entrance was just below her.

Zelda turned and looked through the doorway in the direction she had come. The black substance had already begun to ooze a slow progress forward, blocking her passage. She could return the way she came, but it would be difficult if the goo did not consent to move away from her feet. Instead of attempting to wade through the slime, she exited the guard tower from its opposite door and continued upward along the wall.

Before long, Zelda was just above the spacious courtyard in front of the Great Hall. There was no easy way to descend to the ground from her position, so she paused to consider her options.

 _What would Link do?_

As soon as this thought crossed her mind, it was accompanied by a mental image of the young man swinging himself over the edge of the wall and climbing down the stones. Link had never allowed any barrier to stand in his way, and he had been in the habit of finding surprising and unorthodox methods of navigation during their excursions into the wilder areas of Hyrule.

Zelda admired Link's courage and determination just as much as she envied his strength and dexterity, but it would be impossible for her to emulate him. How could she scale the castle wall in a dress and sandals?

She sighed and continued to gaze into the courtyard. An odd sound whirred at the edge of her attention, and she looked directly down to find the blue eye of a Guardian staring back up at her. She gasped and threw her hands in front of her face. The instinctual gesture was useless, she realized, but a second later she noticed that there was no red dot from the machine's targeting system on her palm. Like the eyes emerging from the black slime, the Guardian seemed to be content simply to watch her.

As Zelda lowered her hands, she saw the lens of the Guardian's mechanical eye shift slightly. To affirm what she had seen, she waved her arm in a slow circle, and there was a faint buzzing as the Guardian adjusted its view. Despite herself, Zelda was impressed. The Sheikah technicians had not been able to get the machines to track movement on their own. Whoever was controlling them now must know what they were doing.

Zelda remembered a conversation she had once had with Purah about the preservation of Sheikah technology. After years of excavation and testing, everyone in the kingdom knew about the Divine Beasts and how a long-ago king had decided that they were too dangerous to remain in Hyrule. What Zelda wanted to know was how the Sheikah managed to retain their knowledge of how to assemble and maintain Guardians, even hundreds of years after the construction of such machines had been forbidden by law.

Purah, who was used to Zelda's questions, hadn't been surprised by the inquiry, but she'd seemed reluctant to answer. When Zelda pressed her, she finally admitted that most Sheikah knew nothing about machines, and those who sought to find out more without permission were harshly punished. Information was divided between families so that it would remain fragmented and esoteric, and dissemination of this information outside of one's family meant exile.

"I'm not sure I understand how that's plausible," Zelda had objected. "What happens when someone marries into another Sheikah family? There can't be that many pure-blooded Sheikah left. What happens when a Sheikah marries a Hylian or a Gerudo?"

"Such matters are regulated by the elders," Purah muttered, embarrassed by the question. "Our marriage partners are chosen for us, usually generations in advance."

"But that's awful!" Zelda exclaimed. "Even I have some choice in who I marry! Surely exceptions must be made."

"Our highest duty is to the royal family," Purah responded, shaking her head. "We regulate ourselves, and that's why we can be trusted. After all, not just anyone can be counted on not to misuse the technology we've been entrusted with, or not to steal it. We protect the history and the secrets of the kings and queens of Hyrule, and it is an honor for us to serve the kingdom."

"And we thank you for your service," Zelda said softly, unsure of how to respond.

"I've heard that..." Purah began, her words trailing off as she started fidgeting with a device that resembled a smaller version of the Sheikah slate. She swallowed and started again, still looking at the screen of the machine in her hands. "I've heard that there are still Sheikah in the shrines that people have reported appearing in Hyrule. They've been there for hundreds of years, preserved and somehow still alive, just waiting for the Calamity to appear again. I want to say that can't be true, but I think... I think it may be possible."

"I think we may have the technology to allow for long-term stasis," Purah continued in a smaller voice. "Gradual physical regeneration may also be possible, but I don't think it was ever perfected, and... Who would volunteer for such a fate? Even among the Sheikah?"

Purah didn't meet Zelda's eyes as she spoke. Zelda followed Purah's gaze down to her device and saw that she was clenching it so hard that the tips of her fingers were white.

"I'm afraid, to be honest," Purah said, laughing nervously. It's an honor to be entrusted with this technology, but what happens after we fight the Calamity? What happens if we win? What happens when the Sheikah families decide that this knowledge should once again be buried along with the shrines? What if we learn too much? Some people have already started to talk about forming their own clan and setting up a base in the desert, but..."

"The desert isn't so bad," Zelda interjected, thinking of the time she'd spent with Urbosa during her visits to Gerudo Town. "And there's no reason the Sheikah should have to devote themselves to Hyrule if they don't wish to," she added.

Purah looked uncomfortable. "No, you don't understand, those people are crazy. They've been throwing around wild ideas about armed resistance, and the way they feel about the royal family is..."

Suddenly there was a loud crash as one of the Guardians ambling across the yard collapsed on its legs. Purah flinched and cringed, and when someone shouted for her she bowed her head slightly in Zelda's direction in apology and then started to jog over to the accident.

As Zelda watched her join the rest of the Sheikah technicians, she wondered if she and Purah had ever really been friends – or if they ever really could be. On several occasions she had enjoyed amiable chats with a girl named Impa, an apprentice to one of the Sheikah appointed to her father's personal guard. Although Impa was only a year or two older than her, and though they enjoyed one another's company, there had always been a distance between them. Impa was continually coming and going from the castle, and sometimes, even after she returned, she would not be seen for days. No one ever explained where she went or what she did, and Zelda had known better than to ask.

Now, standing on the wall of an empty castle and staring down at the Guardian that was watching her silently with its single glass eye, Zelda wondered what it meant for the Sheikah to serve the royal family. What sacrifices did they have to make, and why did they choose to make them? Zelda had later been attacked by the renegade Sheikah that Purah had warned her about, and in one instance she had almost been killed. Still, she couldn't help but feel pity for the people who had banded together and started calling themselves "the Yiga Clan." If even Purah, who enjoyed an admirable level of self-confidence and a passion for her interests that was so focused that it sometimes resembled tunnel vision, could confess to being afraid, how must other members of the Sheikah tribe feel?

Zelda closed her eyes and shook her head to clear her mind. This was not the time or the place to dwell on such matters. She could investigate the relationship between the Sheikah and the Hylian monarchs once Ganon had been dealt with, but first she had to find it.

She needed to enter the castle from the main courtyard, but she had already ascertained that it was impossible to climb down the stairs in the guard towers. _If Link were in this situation_ , she thought, _he would take the most direct route_. In her current position, the most direct route meant climbing down the wall. With nothing but flimsy sandals on her feet and an active Guardian watching her from below, it wasn't an ideal scenario, but she didn't have much of a choice.

Zelda gathered her dress around her waist and gingerly swung her leg over the edge of the wall. She then moved her other leg so that she was sitting on the narrow ledge between crenellations, taking care not to get herself twisted in the hem of her dress. She shifted her weight and turned so that her back was to the courtyard, and then she slowly lowered her foot to seek purchase in a crack between the stones of the wall. She repeated this process with her other leg, and then she began to make her way down, foot by foot and stone by stone.

She knew her ankle would twist a moment before it happened. The pain was so sudden and severe that she lost her grip. Gravity seemed to pull her downward in slow motion, and she watched the stones of the wall fall away from her as if it were happening to someone else.

A thick string of black ooze shot into her field of vision. _How can it move so fast?_ Zelda thought, strangely dissociated from what was happening to her, but then it wrapped around her arm and spun itself into coils around her skin, jolting her back to reality.

The oily slime was foul and unclean, and it stung like rubbing alcohol, yet after her initial moment of shock Zelda realized that it had caught her and saved her from falling. The touch of the substance was almost gentle, and even as it burned her skin the pressure it exerted as it held her was oddly intimate. Zelda gritted her teeth as she held her body rigid. She was embarrassed that she did not feel more disgust, and she cursed herself that she should have any reason to feel grateful to the bituminous muck that had infested the castle.

 _Is this Ganon?_ she asked herself, the moment of her fall seeming to spool out as she hovered in the air. Was this the form it had taken for her? Perhaps a proper princess would have seen a proper monster, but for a failure like her there was only a formless blob of black goo that could not even be suitably menacing. Was this a reflection of her heart? Was this the consequence of the doubt and frustration she felt when she should be filled purely with light?

 _Maybe I deserve to fall_ , she thought, and she closed her eyes.

Instead of hitting the ground, she felt herself being gently placed on her feet.

"But surely this is not necessary," a deep voice said calmly, so close that it seemed to be right next to her.

Startled, Zelda opened her eyes. There was indeed a man standing at her side, and it only took her a fraction of a second to recognize him as the Gerudo boy she had encountered in her earlier visions. He was older now, and he seemed to have grown into his full height. He towered over the man standing next to him, who had the white hair and red eyes characteristic of the Sheikah. They were both wearing clothing adorned with the crying eye of the Sheikah crest, and Zelda was surprised to see that the Gerudo man had his hair bound up in a Sheikah topknot.

"I know it's unsavory, but there's no other way, really," the Sheikah said, and Zelda stepped forward to get a better look at his face. He appeared troubled, and Zelda followed his gaze to a scene playing itself out in the castle yard.

A Bokoblin was chained to a post with iron manacles, and it struggled to free itself as a Guardian slowly approached on its spindly legs. When the Bokoblin jerked to the left, the Guardian's glass eye swiveled to track it as a group of Sheikah technicians standing off to the side made notes on their slates. A red tracking dot appeared on the Bokoblin's forehead, causing it to begin shrieking.

Zelda had seen dozens of Bokoblins fall at the point of Link's sword, but there was something about the treatment of this poor creature that horrified her.

"She's begging for you to let her go," Ganondorf said, raising his voice. He was clearly upset, and Zelda could tell from the tension in his posture that he was making an enormous effort to restrain himself. "She says she's done nothing wrong."

"Those things are intruders in this kingdom," the Sheikah responded. "They know exactly what will happen to them if they cross our borders."

"How could they know? Hyrule has no diplomatic relations with them. There isn't even anyone here who's bothered to learn their language. What right do you have to imprison them and use them like this? Isn't it enough that we used their labor to build the Divine Beasts?"

"It's admirable that you learned how to communicate with them, Ganon, but you have to understand that they're no better than animals. These creatures are savages and thieves, and they can't be reasoned with."

"People used to say that about the Gerudo."

The Sheikah shifted his weight and looked even more uncomfortable. "There may have been conflicts between our countries in the past, but you can't equate the Bokoblins with the Gerudo."

The Bokoblin chained to the post continued to scream and cry.

"She says she was just trying to help her children," Ganon said softly. The Sheikah looked down shook his head.

Ganon inhaled and clenched his fists. "I'm going to put an end to this."

He began to stride across the yard, but before he had taken half a dozen steps the Guardian's beam sliced through the air with an astringent ozone crackle. The Bokoblin's cries were suddenly silenced as her head exploded. Blood and tissue splattered to the ground at her feet. The chains holding her clanked heavily as her body collapsed.

In the silence that followed, Zelda could hear Ganon exhale. She watched the tension drain from his shoulders, but there was something about how the muscles of his back relaxed that frightened her more than if he had flown into a rage. She sensed that a decision had been made, and that it had been as easy and effortless as a heartbeat in the small space between breaths.

This was it, Zelda realized, her body growing cold as the edges of her vision became stained with a creeping darkness. She had gone looking for Ganon, and now she had found him.


	5. In the Interstices of History

Zelda gasped and opened her eyes, and she was back in her own time. Heavy purple clouds swirled across the sky, and flecks of red ash flickered through the air. The hideous severity of the disaster that had befallen Hyrule infused every aspect of her world, and once again she was alone.

Or perhaps she wasn't alone. The Guardian gazed at her intently from its perch on the castle wall, and a bulbous orange eye had sprouted from the thick string of ooze that caught her as she fell. She and the eye watched each other as the slime affixed itself to the stones of the wall, its mass pulsing and shuddering in a way Zelda couldn't help but find repulsive. A discolored bruise from the caustic burn of its touch twined around her arm like a bracelet. She shuddered with distaste.

Ganon was the corrupted code animating the Guardians, and Ganon was the source of the black putrescence that roiled and surged through the cracks of the once-solid rock of the castle. Ganon was the shadow that had murdered the Champions in the Divine Beasts, and Ganon was the formless power that had decimated her city and turned her people into refugees. Ganon was the blind malice that had almost succeeded in killing her chosen knight and dearest friend, and she hated it with all her heart.

If her visions were true, then Ganon was once a man, and he was here in this castle. Zelda didn't care how he had done this, and she didn't care why. She didn't care what sort of person he was, and she didn't care if he was right to have attacked her kingdom. She would find him, and she would destroy whatever he had become.

Zelda had already deduced that the source of the black goo was somewhere below the castle, but her intuition directed her to her study in the west tower. She recalled Urbosa telling her about how the Calamity had once come to Hyrule in the form of one of the rare Gerudo males, and she wanted to consult a book that she vaguely remembered containing information about this legend. Anything she could learn had the potential to become valuable ammunition against Ganon.

Without sparing any further attention to the lurking Guardian or the clinging slime, Zelda walked across the yard with brisk strides. She could feel the weight of the eyes watching her from all around the castle walls and ramparts, but she refused to let it bother her. The skin on her arm felt unspeakably dirty from the touch of the dark mucous, and her ankle still hurt where she had twisted it. The image of the horrible wounds on Link's body still refused to vanish from her mind, and she was still afraid. If she could see and name this thing that had taken everything from her, however, then she could fight it.

Zelda entered the castle, which was deathly still and quiet. There were no signs of fighting, just weapons that had been abandoned as their wielders fled. It was eerie that not a single soul remained behind, that no one was bold enough – or infirm enough – to stay in the castle. There were no Moblins or Bokoblins prowling through the corridors or celebrating in the halls, and even the clinging black slime was scarce in the interior of the center of the castle. It was as if time had stopped here.

When Zelda re-emerged on the upper level, she could no longer see beyond the haze of smoke that surrounded the castle. The outside air was heavy and dry, and it tasted sour. As she scanned the lower roads and yards, searching for any sign of life, the lines and angles of the architecture seemed to twist and distort at the edges of her sight. It was like a scene from a nightmare.

She shook her head and continued to the tower where her quarters were located, her footfalls strangely muted as she climbed the stone steps. When she passed her bedroom, she briefly considered changing out of her filthy clothing, but something stopped her. She hated her ceremonial dress, and she knew it was superstitious nonsense to think it would protect her, but it seemed disrespectful to discard it after it had already carried her this far. She resolved to change her clothes on her way back down, but first she wanted to visit her study.

As Zelda continued climbing, she remembered a conversation she had with Urbosa after she'd failed to awaken her abilities while praying at the Spring of Power. What a waste it had been to travel deep into distant Akkala and venture down into the crevasse housing the shrine only to emerge with nothing to show for it. The journey alone should have been proof to the goddess that she was worthy, but there had been nothing waiting for her in the sacred spring, only hours standing alone in the dark water as her body gradually became so cold that she felt like a block of ice that could shatter at any moment.

After the long and silent trip back to the castle, Zelda confessed to Urbosa that she had hoped the Spring of Power would respond to her desire for strength, which was never far from her heart and mind. She wanted to be strong, and she _needed_ to be powerful. Urbosa had been kind, as she always was, and told her that not everyone needs to be strong. Zelda resented her then, thinking that only someone who has been powerful her entire life could feel comfortable uttering such a vacuous platitude.

When she arrived at her study at the top of the tower, Zelda went straight to one of the bookcases lining the walls. She knew exactly where to find the book she wanted, for nothing in the room had been disturbed. Were it not for the black clouds and red sparks twisting through the sky on the other side of the windowpanes, it would be as if nothing had changed.

Zelda had always come into this room with a mixture of anxiety and determination, but now that her work had finally found its purpose she felt almost serene. She knelt on the floor to retrieve a book from the second-to-lowest shelf, where it had been placed above the dust yet below the light. The leather-bound volume was at least two hundred years old, but there were many books in the main library that were far older, and so Zelda had felt little guilt in stealing it away for her own use. When she was younger she had enjoyed looking at the illustrations, even though she found the archaic language almost impossible to decipher.

Her fingers found what she was looking for immediately. Monopolizing an entire page near the beginning of the book was a print depicting a dark and inhuman shadow positioned between a red sky and a golden ocean of sand. Zelda could now read the text that accompanied this terrible image, which told her that once, far back in the mists of time when Hyrule had only barely been established, it was almost destroyed by a man from the desert, a violent and merciless warlord whose evil influence spread like an endless cloud of toxic smoke over the green fields of the kingdom. He was fire and he was death, and his name was Ganondorf. Although he was defeated by a wise princess and her brave knight, his hatred was eternal, and one day he would escape from his prison in the Sacred Realm to finish what he had started.

Zelda tapped her finger on the words "escape from his prison." That was the key, it must be. Zelda didn't know if the "Ganondorf" mentioned in the legend was the Gerudo male she had seen in her visions or someone from long before that man was ever born, but "Ganon" returned because it had not been defeated, only trapped, and its prison was somewhere below Hyrule Castle. Imprisoning it was not enough. Whatever – or _who_ ever – it was, it wanted her to find it and set it free, and she had a strong suspicion that she would need to release it in order for it to be properly destroyed.

An oleaginous squelching caught her attention, and Zelda looked up at one of the tower windows. It did not surprise her to see that it was rimmed with black ooze. "Fine," she muttered, rising to her feet. She went to the window and flung it open, letting in a cloud of ash and sparks. The slime did not burst into the room but merely began dripping down the windowsill. Zelda hesitated but then extended her hand. She touched her fingertips to the substance, grimacing at the burn but refusing to pull away. She began stroking it gently, just as Link had once taught her to soothe a horse.

"I'm here," she said, closing her eyes. "Show me what you need me to see."

The sensation of displacement that followed was mild, and Zelda was not afraid to open her eyes when it passed. When she did, she saw that she was still at the window, which was open to allow in a warm summer breeze. The sun was setting, and the rich hues staining the western sky were magnificent. Beyond the castle walls stretched a glorious and fantastic city of towers and glass that was every bit as awe-inspiring as the Gerudo city had been, but Zelda knew that this was not what she was intended to witness. She turned to face the interior of the room and gasped in surprise.

There was a bed in the corner, and tangled in its sheets were the Gerudo man who had haunted her visions and the Hylian princess whose face she shared. They were both completely naked, and their hair was unbound. The princess sat with her back to the man, who was smiling as he combed her hair with a silver brush.

"Sometimes I wonder if there even is a Calamity," the princess said softly, breaking the silence.

Ganondorf did not respond immediately. Instead he set the brush down and began dividing the princess's hair into segments.

"I assure you that there is a Calamity," he finally replied. "Or at least there will be one when those war machines start moving."

"It's awful, isn't it," the princess said, bowing her head and looking down at her hands as she twisted her fingers in agitation. "At first I didn't want to believe you, but now I can't see it any other way."

"And it's terrible that I didn't see it before now," she continued. "Vah Ruta has the power to completely disrupt the ecosystem of the Zora territories. Vah Naboris creates sandstorms, and Vah Medoh can knock the Rito from the sky. And even the Gorons, who by all rights should be invincible, have reason to fear Vah Rudania. Even if there were a Calamity staring us right in the face, surely the tribes must be able to see the Divine Beasts for the threat that they are."

"It's territorial expansion, plain and clear," Ganondorf muttered. The gentleness of his hands in the princess's hair belied the bitter edge of his words. "And I, fool that I am, made it possible. The king will use those machines to take the cities of the outlying tribes, but he won't stop there. All of Hyrule will suffer, and when the Calamity comes no one will bear more blame than I do."

At this, the princess smiled sadly and shook her head. "How selfish of you, Ganon, to hog all the responsibility to yourself. I think I contributed a fair amount, wouldn't you agree? Even as the weapons of the Divine Beasts were installed and tested, I was smiling and assuring people that this technology would save us all. When the attacks begin, it will be me on the front lines, still smiling, still praying for the glory of Hyrule."

"You know what we need to do," Ganondorf replied, twisting Zelda's pleated hair above her head in a bun.

"Who will become the Calamity, then?" Zelda asked him, picking up a small hand mirror to admire herself. "Shall it be me, or will you do the honors?"

Ganondorf settled his chin on her shoulder so that his face was reflected next to hers in the mirror. "I think it should be me," he said. He smiled, bearing his teeth. "I've got the face for it, and we both know that I'm better at controlling those things than you are. I wrote most of the code, after all."

"You did not," Zelda countered, turning and batting at him playfully. He caught her hands in his fists, and they pretended to struggle with each other as she continued speaking, sending light punches in his direction to emphasize her words. "I wrote the foundation of that code, and you only came in later. As a junior programmer, no less. You may have debugged and refined a few things, but you were only building on what I created."

"And who created the Guardians, then?"

"You worked off of my designs."

"Whatever you say, Your Highness," Ganondorf replied, laughing. "But you know, sometimes I wonder how you could have ever come up with such things. What sort of princess spends her childhood developing battalions of mechanical soldiers?"

"Don't all princesses dream of battle and conquest?"

"I can only imagine so."

"If we survive this, and if I ever become queen..."

" _When_ you become queen," Ganondorf corrected her.

"When I become queen, then, I swear I will demilitarize Hyrule. If I don't, those machines will be the end of us. I don't care about the legends, and I don't care what may have happened in the past. I just want this kingdom to be peaceful. I'm going to outlaw that technology if it's the last thing I do. I'm going to decommission it and bury it so far under the ground that it will be centuries before anyone finds it again."

"Please, Zelda," Ganondorf murmured, stroking her cheek with his thumb, "do this thing. Do it in my place. Do it for me."

The princess looked away from him, and Zelda could see tears starting to form in the corners of her eyes. "You know," she said softly, "for the longest time I thought that you came to this kingdom with evil intentions. I watched you rise, and I saw how much you wanted power. And before you came no one else had even dreamed that it would be possible to make machines like this. I thought that, when you built those things, you might turn them against us. It's ironic, isn't it? That now I'm the one who wants this to happen."

Ganondorf continued to caress the princess's face and neck silently for several moments, but then he spoke. "You weren't wrong," he said. "Now that we're no longer keeping secrets from each other, you might as well know that I thought about it. When I fled from the Gerudo, I didn't care anything about Hyrule. The only thing that mattered to me was that this country was far away from my own. But in time I came to love this land – and to hate it. I thought the Hylians were a weak and jealous people whose only strength lay in enslaving others. How could you squander the riches of the land you took for granted? Surely this kingdom could be better managed by someone who appreciated it and saw it for what it was..."

Ganondorf's words trailed off as he placed his hands on the princess's shoulders and bowed his head so that his forehead met hers. She kissed him lightly and stroked the ropy muscles of his arms.

"I thought about it," he whispered, so quietly that Zelda almost couldn't hear him. "I've been thinking about it for so long that I know exactly how it can be done."

"I sometimes feel that the goddesses are laughing at us. It must amuse them to watch us while we struggle to escape our fate," the princess responded, twining her fingers through Ganondorf's hair. "But we had a good thing while it lasted, didn't we?"

"Please talk to Link," Ganondorf said. "Make sure he knows. Make sure he's ready to fight me."

The princess looked away from him, but she nodded.

"Are _you_ ready to fight me?" he asked.

The princess looked up at him, her tears trailing wet lines down her face. She smiled. "I was born ready to fight you."


	6. A Thousand Years of Solitude

Zelda yanked her hand back from the windowsill, and her vision exploded into itself. Her stomach plummeted, but the sensation no longer bothered her. When she could finally see clearly again, she walked over to the book of legends lying on the floor and kicked it as hard as she could. It catapulted across the room and crashed into a table covered in glass beakers, which went flying and shattered on the stone floor.

She'd told herself that she didn't care who Ganon was or why he attacked Hyrule, but now that she knew she could never return to a state of not knowing. Had the Champions been aware of the danger of reviving the Divine Beasts? Had Link understood the cycle of destruction he was instigating by drawing the Master Sword? Had Purah known that the Guardians were specifically engineered to storm the castle? Did her father understand that her role in this drama was to be nothing more than a sacrificial figurehead? Is that why they had kept her innocent and stupid?

"May the goddess damn you all," Zelda whispered, clenching her fists at her sides. Despair and frustration overwhelmed her, but she had no tears left to cry. She felt a new power swelling within her, fueled by the white-hot core of a growing rage.

While she had been lost in her vision, the black slime had oozed its way across the floor and puddled at the base of a bookcase on the far wall. What did it want from her? She stepped over the trail of muck and approached the bookcase. It seemed to be tilting to one side. Not caring what sort of mess she made, Zelda gave it a strong push. It fell on its side with a crash, and books slid off its shelves like paper snakes.

On the wall behind the bookcase was a door. Zelda was certain that there had never been a door here before, as the tower wall was not wide enough to accommodate any sort of passage. Although the door seemed as real as anything else in the room, it shimmered with the same sort of golden light that had burst from the palm of her hand only hours before. Had it really only been a few hours? She couldn't be certain, but it no longer mattered to her.

Zelda twisted the knob and pulled the door open, revealing a stone staircase. It was impossible for there to be a staircase on the other side of the wall, but it looked like any of the other narrow and utilitarian corridors used by the castle staff to move behind the scenes of the large audience halls. Holding onto the edge of the wall for good measure, Zelda tentatively placed one of her feet onto the landing to test it. It seemed solid enough. She looked over her shoulder at her ruined study, where the eerie half-light of the dark sky pooled in the shattered glass on the floor. There was no longer anything for her here, so she might as well move forward. She crossed over the threshold and, not giving too much thought to what she was doing, pulled the door closed behind her.

The stairs curled around a central support column in a spiral as she climbed down, and down and down and down. As Zelda walked she heard echoes of voices speaking in strange languages, only some of which she recognized. She wondered how this magical staircase had been created and how long it had been here, just waiting for the right person to find it. Did it exist outside of time, or was she perhaps passing through time as she descended? A multitude of questions drifted through her mind as she climbed, but none of them seemed particularly urgent. Her ankle had stopped hurting, and she felt no weariness or hunger or thirst. The repetition of her equally measured steps was calming, and as her mind settled it gradually occurred to her that she herself had now passed out of time. Within the seal she had created, the concept of time no longer held any meaning. Ganon would remain here for as long as the seal was maintained – but so too would she.

After a dozen minutes of climbing, or a dozen hours, or a dozen days, the light in the stairwell became marginally less dim, and finally the stone steps ended in another shimmering golden portal. Zelda stepped through it to find herself in the large cavern on the north side of the castle complex that housed a small and mostly forgotten wharf. At the edge of the slope above the water was a shrine. Its glow cast an eerie illumination into the darkness.

Surely there hadn't been a shine here before. When she was still a girl, Zelda had occasionally used the hidden passage in the library to venture down to this cave, which was filled with empty crates and broken furniture and other castaway detritus of the castle. The docks themselves were a shambles. The wood of the piers rotted into the water, and the moored boats were filled with spiderwebs and already half waterlogged. No one had any need to escape from a castle that hadn't been under siege until the present day – if one could even consider this a siege. _Truly_ , Zelda thought as she watched the febrile magenta light leaking from between the swirling cracks in the shrine disappear into the inky water, _this can only be called a haunting_.

As she walked toward the shrine, a soft wisp of white light caught her attention by one of the docks. She squinted and drew closer until she could make out the figure of a woman. She wore heavy silver armor on her small body and tight braids in her hair, and though her face was older Zelda could see that this was the same princess from her earlier visions. The princess was pulling someone from a flat-bottomed skiff, which was poled by a large Moblin wearing loose robes dyed in a bold geometric pattern. The princess reached out to the Moblin, who clasped her hand as she bowed her head. She began to speak to it with complete fluency. Zelda couldn't understand a word, and she felt a piercing shame that it had never occurred to her to speak with a Moblin or Bokoblin herself. Link had always stood between her and the enemy races, and...

The figure huddled on the dock groaned, cutting through the tangle of Zelda's thoughts. She could see a dark puddle of blood forming around him. The princess must have seen this too, for she leapt lightly from the boat and knelt next to him. She helped him to his feet, and when he raised his face Zelda was not at all surprised to see that the injured man was Ganondorf. He was wearing obsidian armor adorned with the same ceramic swirls and glowing nodules that patterned the exteriors of the Guardians, but the surface of his armor plating was cracked and broken. He held both of his hands pressed against a hideous wound that split his torso from his sternum to his belly, and it seemed that he was only keeping himself together through the sheer force of his will. As the princess guided him up the hill to the shrine, he trailed bloody footprints, and an oily grime fell in heavy drops from the tattered cloth of his cape.

When they reached the raised platform in front of the shrine, the princess helped him sit, carefully leaning his back against the command pedestal. She waved her hand in front of her face, and a Sheikah Slate materialized from thin air and floated into her waiting fingers. Surely this must be magic. So it was true, then – the daughters of the royal family did indeed have special powers. Zelda moved closer to get a better look. If she wasn't mistaken, this was the very same device that she had carried herself.

"Hold on just a little longer," the princess said to Ganondorf as she tapped the screen of the slate. "I'm going to take you to the stasis chamber in the main laboratory. It's not perfect, but it's the best chance we've got to save you. The place should be deserted, so no one will try to stop us. It's just a little farther..."

"I won't make it," he slurred. "I won't... the teleportation."

There was something horribly wrong with the way he was speaking. Zelda closed the distance between them, and she immediately understood why. Ganondorf's injuries were severe, and his face was a mask of pain. It was a marvel that he was still alive.

"If we haven't killed you yet, you'll survive this," the princess said in a dry and brittle voice. "I'm initiating the sequence now. Just try to relax. You'll probably pass out, but I'll make sure you get to the stasis chamber in one piece."

The panel in front of the shrine began glowing with cyanic light, and the princess knelt to take Ganondorf in her arms.

"When all of this is over," he said, reaching up to stroke her face, "will you come to wake me up?"

As a circle of light surrounded the pair, their bodies were lifted several inches above the surface of the platform, and their shapes began to fade. Zelda jumped forward into the warp field, and she felt herself rise and dissolve. Suddenly the world was snatched from her blinded eyes, and her skin was pricked by millions of needles before a strong force struck her like an explosion.

When she recovered her senses, she was lying on a cold tile floor. She opened her eyes but could see nothing. She raised her head and was overcome by nausea. She pulled herself into a sitting position and took several deep breaths, keeping her eyes open all the while. If she could survive the freezing waters of the sacred springs, then she could survive this.

Gradually her vision returned to her. She was surrounded by Sheikah machinery whose tubing glowed with an eldritch light. Above her was a huge dome covered in patterns of golden lines and circles. These patterns resembled constellations, but there was an order to them that suggested writing. The dome was impossibly large, perhaps larger than the entire castle. To think that it had been underneath her this entire time! It had obviously been built to last for centuries, so perhaps the constellations drawn across the ceiling were indeed meant to be writing. Perhaps there was a code in the patterns that transcended time and culture. Despite everything that had happened to bring her to this place, Zelda was mesmerized by the possibilities, and she had to force herself to look away from the magnificent spectacle.

The dimly lit space around her was filled with machines that Zelda couldn't even begin to understand. Some were ceramic, and some were metal, and like the room itself they were all built to an impossible scale. As she walked through the maze of glowing lights, Zelda began to realize that this must be the factory where the Guardians had been manufactured, and perhaps it was the birthplace of the Divine Beasts as well. Despite its dereliction, everything was clean and untouched by decay. There was no dust or debris, nor any of the black ooze that had infested the rest of the castle.

Although she had no way of knowing where to go, Zelda felt as if her feet were being guided to her destination. When she arrived, she knew it immediately.

In the middle of the graveyard of abandoned machinery was a large glass tube, and the tube was filled with slime. Zelda felt a chill pass through her, but she still walked directly to the tube until she was so close that her nose was practically touching its surface. Looking closely, she could see that the slime was cocooning some sort of hellish nightmare imperfectly assembled from tangles of wire and twitching clumps of flesh and hair.

She reached forward to touch the glass, and there was a sudden movement on the other side. In the endless horror of a split second she caught a glimpse of something resembling the sweep of an arm, but it was like no arm she had ever seen, twisted and necrotic and entirely inhuman. Was this the stasis chamber where the princess had brought Ganondorf hundreds of years ago? Was this what remained of his body? Was the fleshy tar surging up through the castle not a manifestation of Ganondorf's malice, but a biological byproduct of the monstrous creature he had become?

Zelda understood that there must be very little of this man's human mind left. How long he must have slept, and how terrible his dreams must have been. Did he ever wake, encased in this grotesque prison of flesh, and experience a moment of hideous lucidity? Or had he long ago descended into complete madness? The only trace of him that remained was the overwhelming rage that guided his terrible purpose, and this was the diseased tumor at its core.

If the legends were correct – and they had been correct, even despite being clumsily varnished with convenient lies – then only the divinely endowed blade of the Master Sword could destroy this thing. With the Master Sword she could end everything now; if it had been in her hands she could vanquish this evil and restore peace to her kingdom. But she was just a princess, just a girl, just a sacrificial vessel. She was not meant to wield the sacred sword, or to access the secrets hidden within the shrines, or even to save herself. She had no choice but to wait in this haunted castle with this horrific monstrosity and wait for Link.

"Damn it!" Zelda hissed. She balled her hand into a fist and punched the glass of the stasis tube. The mass of flesh inside did not react in the slightest, and she continued to pound the edge of her palm against the smooth and unyielding surface as the tears she had been holding back for so long finally began to leak from her eyes.

Once again she felt weak and useless, and she cursed herself. How could she keep the incredible malice generated by this ancient and awful thing contained? If the magic that created the seal enclosing the castle sprang from the strength of her spirit, what was to become of her? She reached for any shred of hope in her heart, but all she could feel was bitterness and an overwhelming sense of _wanting_ – wanting a power that had not been granted to her, and wanting the freedom that she had never been allowed to have.

Zelda bowed her head and allowed her tears to fall freely, and when she looked up again there was a hazy shape behind her reflection on the glass. At this point there was very little that could cause her to feel fear, so she simply dried her eyes with the back of her hand. She blinked, and the shadow behind her reflection was clearer.

It was Ganondorf, his face unscarred and his armor unbroken. It seemed as though he were standing only a footstep or two behind her, but she sensed no other presence in the room, no warmth of proximity or even the slightest sound of breathing.

Zelda met Ganondorf's eyes in the reflection, and for a moment they regarded each other in silence.

She had dozens of questions, but they all evaporated in the sudden glare of her anger.

"You did this," she snarled.

"I did," the reflection agreed, speaking to her in her own language. Despite the ferocity of his appearance, his voice was smooth and mellifluous. "But I could not have done it alone."

Zelda frowned, wanting to accuse him of lying to her, but she knew he spoke the truth.

"That princess, all those years ago... Why did she do it?" she asked.

"She desired peace, and she attained it." Ganondorf's eyes softened. "There has been peace in Hyrule for hundreds of years. She knew what the price was, and it was her decision to pay it."

Zelda shook her head. "Why did you show me those visions? None of this changes anything. We will still defeat you."

"I can only pray that you will, but first you must understand what happened to Hyrule."

"And what am I supposed to do with this knowledge? All you've done is cause me pain."

"Wisdom also has a price."

"And why do you care whether or not I'm wise? If the price I have to pay is constant doubt, how can I rule this land? If I don't even _want_ to be a princess, how can I serve Hyrule?"

"Hyrule no longer exists," he answered her, smiling for the first time.

"Then where will I find the power to defeat you?"

"You've had it all this time. It's a shame no one taught you to use it."

"But if I've had it, why hasn't it come to me when I've needed it?" Zelda asked in desperation. "Why haven't I been able to fight you?"

To her surprise, the reflection behind her laughed. "You remind me so much of her," he said. "They probably told you to pray, didn't they? They told you to deny yourself, and to purify your heart. They treated you like a sacred doll, I'm sure they did. They must have, to think you could walk into battle wearing that ridiculous dress."

Zelda nodded, biting her lip to prevent herself from answering Ganondorf's smile with one of her own. Now that he said what she had been thinking, in a gentle tone with laughter in his voice, it all seemed so silly. Why had she ever taken any of that nonsense seriously? Why had she felt compelled to perform her duties so assiduously even though they clearly benefited no one?

"They told you that you must only care for the good of your people," Ganondorf continued, "but they lied. They lied to you because the power you wield is great enough to break and remake Hyrule many times over."

Zelda placed her hand on the glass of the stasis tube, no longer disturbed by the writhing mass within. "Then tell me," she murmured, hardly daring to believe that she spoke these words aloud, "how do I claim this power?"

The reflection behind her leaned forward, and she saw the faint ghost of a hand cover hers. Suddenly the three triangles of the royal family's Triforce crest appeared on her skin, shining a warm golden light into her face.

"Your power belongs to you, and no one else," a soft voice said in her ear. "If you can be wise enough to understand what you really want and brave enough to trust your heart, then you will find the power to achieve your desires. For once in your life, be selfish... Zelda..."

When he said her name, his hand vanished, but the Triforce crest remained.

"Ganondorf?" Zelda called out, but there was no response.

"Ganon?" she tried again, but there was only silence.

Zelda took a deep breath. _What do I really want, more than anything?_ she asked herself, but her heart already knew the answer.

"Link..." she whispered. The light of the Triforce on her hand gleamed brighter as the desire in her heart grew stronger.

"...open your eyes," she commanded, and then she could see him, floating within a stasis chamber much like the one she stood in now. His body had wasted away, and he looked dreadfully weak. Zelda willed the stasis tube to deactivate, and its fluid began draining away, placing Link gently in the cradle at the bottom. She saw his eyelids flutter, and she could feel the thrum of her power flowing through her veins.

"Open your eyes!"

~ THE END ~


End file.
